An Awkward Commission

by David Donachie

  ‘Should you go ashore with him, sir,’ whispered one older hand, ‘which is likely at Gibraltar, then be like we is, prepared to either drag him away from some indiscretion, or fight off the beaux of whichever women with whom the silly sod has taken a liberty.’

  ‘Yet he does not drink at sea? He declined to join me in more than one glass at our first meal.’

  ‘Never, sir. He respects the sea too much and as he says, he is damned if he will surrender any of us up to its tempers for not being as sharp as is needed.’

  To take such a liking to anyone so quickly was a strange sensation for Pearce, hardly surprising given the life he had lived. Too many times, growing up, he had trusted someone only to be disappointed, which had made him reticent in meeting people for the first time. Yet he had felt the need to be completely honest right off, with the captain hinting that having a ‘capital naval fellow’ on his deck would be good for all sorts of things, not least in allowing them to compare the different ways of rigging and sailing.

  ‘You will find me a sad example of a naval officer, Mr McGann,’ Pearce said, feeling the movement of the ship on his knees as they moved out into the Spithead anchorage. ‘The uniform is a sham.’ The response to his candour was that disarming, body-shaking laugh. Encouraged thus, Pearce told his tale, as well as his purpose, told how he had come by his rank, though he played down the action from which it had resulted, praising instead those who had fought with him.

  ‘So you see, Mr McGann, it is not sea service but a stroke of luck and the aid of others that has got me to where I am.’

  McGann swung the ship’s wheel a fraction, reacting to a change in the current as it ran in from deeper water. The wind strengthened too, which called for a slight trimming of the yards.

  ‘It is a singular thing, sir, such elevation, though I have a’heard of it happening afore, an’ from the same king who showed favour to you. I know, too, that it is not given for light work, but for acts quite exceptional in the fighting line.’ The man’s chest and substantial belly heaved as he laughed once more, his eyes twinkling as he added, ‘Mr Pearce, I suspect you are guilty of modesty.’

  ‘It is some consolation to me to know that I am not too singular. The charge of modesty I deny.’

  ‘Deny away, sir, for to do so gives you credit.’

  ‘Needles coming up on the starboard beam, Capt’n,’ called a hand who was aloft in the rigging, changing a block and so could see well ahead over the bowsprit.

  McGann called back ‘Why thank ’e, Harold, much obliged,’ before speaking softly to Pearce. ‘A fine lad that, as they all are. His father and I sailed together when I was his age, and we was true mates.’

  ‘What brought you to this?’

  ‘Good fortune, Mr Pearce, which has stayed true, not least in the willingness of those I know to stick with me, and those who knew me as a lad to teach me the ways of the sea and how to make my way around it. Sailed to the Carnatic and the Bay of Bengal more’n once, and I was allowed to indulge in a little private trade, buying spices, gold trinkets and the like that I could sell on my return. Husbandry gave me enough to put down a sum on a boat, and I engaged myself to the postal service when it was still a sinecure. By the time Billy Pitt bought it in, I had the Lorne and was set up to sign for regular service, Gibraltar and back, with the government. I was also lucky, as you were not, never to be taken out of a ship or ashore in a time of war, and so never suffered the indignity of being a pressed seaman.’

  ‘Indignity describes it, Captain McGann, though it gives me no pleasure to say I have known worse.’ Responding to the enquiring look, Pearce said, ‘In time, sir, we will be in each others’ company long enough for me to tell you all.’

  ‘Have it as you will. I will not press you.’

  The pun on the word press brought forth another hearty laugh, one so intense that the captain had to ask Pearce to hold the wheel steady while he recovered. With that in his hand, and feeling that the ship had a life through it, Pearce was once more reminded of the sham of his commission, and the haunting fear that once in the Mediterranean, he might be offered a place aboard a ship which he might have to accept just to stay on the station.

  ‘I may press you, sir, for as I have already told you, my ignorance of the sea is great.’

  ‘A capital play on the word, sir,’ exclaimed McGann, heaving once more, and wheezing as he sought air. ‘Capital indeed.’

  ‘But true.’

  ‘You wish to know more?’

  ‘It matters not what I wish, it is more what I need.’

  Short by a head though he was, McGann nevertheless managed to get an arm around Pearce’s shoulder. ‘Then this, sir, shall be your school for the time you are aboard, and I take leave to say you could find none finer, for there is not a hand serving on this vessel that would not be pleased to instruct, as am I. But, recall this, if you want to stay off the deck and out of wind, water and cold, that is your privilege.’

  Pearce hardly hesitated a second. ‘I would be happy to be your pupil, sir.’

  ‘Then I too am happy. I ain’t never taught a man ’owt, but that I have learnt something in return, sir. I look forward to having you on my deck, but just as much I anticipate with pleasure the conversation we will have when we are below.’

  Lorne was constructed for speed through the water. She was of narrow build, carrying as few stores as possible, no cargo and damn stability, for the contract McGann had was not one to allow him much in the way of double ventures. His task was to get the mails to Gibraltar and back as speedily as possible, avoiding any attempt to intercept them now the nation was again at war with France.

  ‘Twelve days is around the norm for the passage, though I have had it take twice that time in the winter months. Made it in under five days, one trip. Never known such a wind oblige for the whole journey. Blew hard and consistent from the north-east to push us down the Channel, then swung round to a fine, strong north-westerly off the Lizard so that the lee rail was never clear of the sea all the way south, with every man jack up from below to take pleasure in flying. Fourteen knots was our best cast of the log. Fourteen knots, Mr Pearce, have you ever heard the like!’

  According to McGann, they were doing very well at the moment under a bright blue sky, a warm late-July sun and an gentle easterly breeze right astern. The log had run off six knots on the last cast, Pearce sure of this for it had been himself in the chains doing the casting, with the man accustomed to the task there to make sure he learnt to do it right and did not risk drowning by too much enthusiasm. Prior to that he had been aloft helping to run out the booms for the skysails, then going out onto those booms to haul the sails aloft, lashing them on and then loosing the ties and letting them fall, bare soles bouncing in the footropes, his shirt billowing out on the breeze, constantly admonished by the man next to him to, ‘Clap on, sir, clap on. Allas keep one hand for the boat.’

  And it had been a pleasure, so different from when he been aloft on either Griffin or Brilliant, different because it was voluntary, the pleasure doubled by making a real effort to do the tasks well, even more pleased by the way he was cheerfully egged on by the men with whom he was working. Those same fellows could not tie a knot or look to splice a rope without calling out to show how it was done. They could not haul a fall through a block without explaining why one line was on a single block, when another, for its weight, needed the gearing of a double. And he hauled with them when hauling was required, the tar on his palms like a badge rather then the disgrace it had previously been. John Pearce was enjoying himself.

  Soon they were past the Lizard and, in darkness, they had made their southing to run well clear of Ushant. The weather was good, the sea steady, a long and comfortable swell that hardly disturbed the plates on McGann’s dinner table. Their course was set and a trusty pair were on the wheel, with half the crew standing by as a watch, for like the Navy a postal packet did not shorten sail at night. Earlier that same day, he had been instructing Pearce in the use
of a sextant, expressing no surprise that he had no prior knowledge of an instrument he owned, albeit one that had suffered from use in hands that had clearly, more than once, dropped it.

  ‘Now once you got the sun reflected a’right, bring it down to the horizon, waving a fraction left an right, which tells you when it touches, and stops it dipping below the horizon.’

  Doing that twice a day was something Pearce mastered; what he found impossible were the calculations necessary to make sure the time was correct, this before Captain McGann could adjust one of his chronometers, the difference between the one set to Greenwich time and the result giving the ship’s position. Night-time sightings were a mystery and likely to remain so, ‘Shooting Stars’, as the his mentor called it, with seven different celestial objects to aim at, and the obscurity of something called a nominal point to commence matters.

  McGann, who would not suffer another soul to touch them, took a cloth and gently rubbed one of his beautiful clocks. ‘It be hard to think of life without them now, yet it is not more’n thirty years since Harrison proved their worth. Many’s a sailor was lost and went to Davy Jones without them. And here we are running past the Scillies. Did you ever hear of an admiral called Sir Cloudsley Shovell?’

  Pearce smiled and shook his head at the outlandish name. He had learnt very early on that McGann loved to tell a tale – what sailor did not – just as he had learnt that, unlike a lot of folk he knew how to do it without boring the breeches off the listener.

  ‘This be in the year 1707 and it goes to show the worth of Harrison’s invention, which came about as a result, though it took time, if you’ll forgive the pun. Old Shovell was bringin’ a squadron of ships back home, his course set for the Channel and Portsmouth, when one of his men told him he was sailing a risky course, that he would run foul of the Scilly Isles if he kept on. Bein’ a choleric bugger, and sure of hisself, Shovell pulled a strop and had flogged the man that dared to question his orders. He then held to the course he had set and ran half his fleet on to the lee shore and drownded ’em. Thousands of sailors lost on a man’s temper. They say he survived and was murdered for his ring, which serves him right.’

  There was a moment when both men contemplated that, Pearce having an uncomfortable memory of struggling in a raging sea that was hammering a rock-strewn shore. It was not a pleasant image.

  ‘I feel safe in the notion that I can master the instrument, Mr McGann, and the clocks present no problem at all, for a careful child could adjust those, but I fear the mathematics will stump me.’

  That was no lie. His father had sought to teach him mathematics, but was only competent in the basics of adding, subtraction and multiplication. His Parisian tutor, the Abbé Morlant, with whom he had studied for two years, was steeped in the Classics, and knew nothing about such matters as geometry and spherical trigonometry, probably seeing them, though he was no zealot, as the work of the devil. Pearce continued to assert that, however interesting it was to be shown something new and instructed in matters outside his experience, it was only curiosity that made him attend to it; he had no notion to ever use it, a declaration at which McGann was quick to scoff.

  ‘But you ain’t got my drift, Mr Pearce. I am sayin’ such things is best left to those that are brought up to it.’ Responding to Pearce’s enquiring look he shook with humour once more. ‘Do you think all your braided officers know about navigation? Do you think they are all sure which sails to set aloft to get the best out of a ship or where the rocks lie on a lee shore? Who is it that stows the hold and trims the barky so she sails smooth. It ain’t the captain that’s for certain.’

  ‘I suspect they must know about navigation, even if your late and unlamented Sir Cloudsley Shovell did not.’

  ‘There are those that do, and capital seamen they are, Cook and that fellow Bligh to name but two. I know it has become common these days to expect a commissioned officer to find his way about in all manner of things, but to my mind a wise man leaves such matters to the vessel’s master. When I first went to sea as a lad, near forty-year past, I admit in merchant service, a ship’s captain was just that, the fellow who saw to the running of the barky and made certain that each man was in the right place to carry out his given task, as well as to do it proper. It weren’t too different, from what I have heard, in the Navy.’

  ‘Is that not dangerous?’

  ‘Not if you has the right people, good people, and unlike that daft Shovell bugger, you listen to ’em. A wise captain has a good master, a wise master has good mates. That Bligh I mentioned started life as a master’s mate, and that was his rating on Cook’s first South Sea adventure, which not many seem to recall. That’s were he learnt his skills, not in a wardroom, or standing watch on the deck of a king’s ship.’

  ‘No doubt it was in those he learnt to ferment mutiny.’

  ‘Happen, for there are those who claim he brought it on hisself. Be that as it may, there is no doubt he is a capital seaman, has to be to sail four thousand miles in an open boat, and I would trust him to keep me safe if he was setting my course. That is not summat I would say to every naval captain I have come across.’

  ‘I am not sure what you are trying to say.’

  ‘What is a king’s ship for, sir?’ A cautiously raised eyebrow forced McGann to continue. ‘Why it’s for fighting, is it not?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then the job of a captain on a king’s ship is to make sure that when it comes to the moment of truth, when the enemy is beam on and firing broadsides, that his ship is set for the response. That does not require him to get it in the right place, or set the right suit of sails to do so, for he will have folk on board who know a damn sight more’n he does about such things. But he must have men on his cannon who can fire and reload, even if the air be full of metal and wood splinters. He must be the kind that can lead when boarding and fight with a cutlass, pistol and pike. Now you have been modest on the question of the Valmy, but you have yet to smoke that Portsmouth is my home. Ashore I am a man who likes to take a drink, and that I has a fair pair of lugs with which to hear what you might term chatter.’

  Seeing McGann tug at a fleshy lobe, emphasising that he did indeed have large and good ears, or lugs as he termed them, Pearce adopted a tone of voice larded with sarcasm. ‘No doubt there has been a certain amount of talk in the taverns. If my experience is anything to go by, most of it will be nonsense.’

  McGann’s face filled with blood and his body began to heave, which increased as he confirmed what Pearce had said, so that his words were delivered with a degree of spluttering.

  ‘I won’t deny that a rate of it is. For one, that there was a midshipman in the Valmy capture who did prodigious deeds, and lost half his limbs in the doin’ of it, ’cording to some. Depending on which tale you listened to, and how gone in drink was the tale-teller, he lost an eye, his right or left arm, and for certain at least one of his legs, and had musket balls and sword thrusts enough through his frame to make a fair imitation of a sieve for fine flour.’

  Pearce smiled and shrugged. ‘Few tales do not grow in the telling, Mr McGann, perhaps even that of your Cloudsley Shovell.’

  As an attempt to change the subject, it failed abysmally. As soon as McGann could control his hilarity, he spoke again. ‘Yet what do I have sitting at my table drinking cider, but that very same fellow, whole and hearty and scarce a scratch, which I do hope you ain’t going to deny. Now filletin’ the tale, and sorting truth from gossip, it seems that what you did was singular.’

  ‘That word again. I’m beginning not to like it.’

  ‘If’n it be the one that fits.’ McGann stopped smiling, and for once his face was serious. ‘I am happy to teach what I can, as is every man in my crew, as I know you have found, but there is scarce time enough to turn you into a Cook or a Bligh. So I have this advice for you. Learn what you can, but never forget that the prime job of a Navy officer is fighting, and in that region, you has better credentials than most.’

&nb
sp; ‘Except I have no desire to be a Navy officer,’

  ‘You will forgive me for goin’ beyond the bounds of bein’ polite, but what in hell’s name do you have a desire to do, and don’t go telling me again about rescuing your old shipmates. Now I am goin’ to say that I took to you the minute I clapped eyes on you, ’cause there was no showing away about what you had done, and that is a feeling that has only grown on acquaintance.’

  ‘It is, Captain McGann, returned in full measure.’

  ‘For which I thank you. I am goin’ to tread the path of discourtesy by alluding to the fact that you are without a father, God rest his soul.’ That was not a sentiment Adam Pearce would have appreciated, but this was not the moment to say so. ‘An’ bein’ without that you lack anyone to advise you.’

  ‘Which you presumably intend to do?’ said Pearce, his smile now absent.

  ‘I see I have angered you, young sir, but if I have my intentions are good ones. What I am saying is this: if you doubt where your future lies you could do worse than the King’s service. You’re a fighter, lad, and a proven one, and I will hazard that with what is going on in the new war with the French, that Farmer George and Billy Pitt need fighting men more’n they need men that can get themselves to the South Seas and back again!’

  Taberly got his fight, but it took place in Gibraltar, HMS Leander calling at the Rock to deliver duplicate despatches, and only because his captain refused to sail on into the Mediterranean with a full supply of wood and water, notwithstanding a dispute with the commanding admiral at Gibraltar, who wanted him back at sea forthwith. The excuse for delay was simple; with no British base in the Inland Sea, and no knowledge of whether purchase would be possible in places like Genoa and Leghorn, nor any faith in the Spanish alliance, a hold full of stores, four months’ supply, was not only wise, but essential. That Captain Tucker, taking advantage of the current state of relations with Spain, could take his net for a day to a hot and arid country he had never visited, and possibly add to his butterfly collection species he had never before seen, was just an accidental dividend.